


when your hearts on fire

by twistedingenue



Category: Captain America, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, OT3, Other, Polyamory, media, relationship discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Remember when women wouldn’t leave the house without a hat, gloves and lipstick?” Steve muses.<br/>“Remember life before yoga pants?” Bucky counters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when your hearts on fire

**Author's Note:**

> for an anon prompt asking for bucky/darcy/steve dealing with media. That's sort of this, I guess. I pretty much call it fluff with feels, with added Darcy badass. 
> 
> Thanks to beth and Jadzia for cheerleading me through a longer than a promptfic of this ot3. Y'all are the greatest.

 

One of the most welcome sights of the entire universe, Steve decides, is Darcy handling his motorcycle like a professional down the ruined street right up beside where he’s got Tony, disassembled and arc reactor flickering, laying. Normally, Darcy getting anywhere close to where the action is ramps up his concern level to about five hundred percent, but this time, her arrival lowers it. Tony will be okay, because Darcy’s the one who could get into Tony’s workshop to grab the spare arc reactor and has hands small and steady enough to replace it.

Tony’s eyes are glassy, but they can track Darcy as she runs, faster than she probably ever has over to them. The others are keeping guard, ready to spirit her away if anything should start attacking again.

“So what was it this time?” Darcy asks straight to Tony, who balks at having to answer stupid questions while he is currently dying, “You aren’t dying. You showed me how to do this yourself. Do you trust your own instructions?”

Tony shuts up while Darcy bunches up his shirt, because they could tear it, but then there would be pictures of half naked Tony walking the streets of New York again, and well, that was old the third time it happened. “Just…ran out the clock again. It’s at about half a percent. Enough that I’m not going to move until,” he shudders, “You get your little fingers in me.”

Steve rolls his eyes, “Stop hitting on my girlfriend while you are dying, Stark. We outnumber you.”

Darcy cuts both of them off, “Lying down or do you want to cuddle against Cap?”

“Whatever is easiest for you, Darcy, at this point, decision making is not my strong point.”

Darcy motions for the cuddling and once Tony is settled, Steve’s arms holding him under the armpits and keeping his shirt in place. Darcy becomes uncharacteristically still as she sets to work. “How are you even alive and moving?” she says, noting how far her hand goes into his chest.

“Not very alive. Without it, I’d have about a week under the best of circumstances, all in excruciating pain.” He looks down at her hands, then tips his head back and lightly sings, “When your hearts on fire, you must realize, smoke gets in your eyes.”

“No, I mean,” she installs the new reactor with just a little shake of nerves, far better than she thought she’d be able to do, and she sits back with a sigh and a stunned expression as it lights up, “You shouldn’t be able to move with that. Like even to breath.”

Steve drops his arms, and Tony sits upright, “Science.” Jazzhands. Always the showman. He leans forward, kisses Darcy on the cheek on his way back to standing, “Thank you.” He strolls off, weakly at first but gaining coherency in his stride.

“Anytime, bossman.” Darcy says. Steve is suppressing a laugh, which means, “What did he say? Where is Bucky anyways?” She tips herself over into Steve outstretched arms, forehead to chest.

“He’s got a line of sight on us from a few hundred yards away. He’s mostly been playing sentinel for this one. Out of sight, out of mind.” Steve replies, his breathe in her hair, “And it was first a dig about Tony’s father and then “Did a good thing, dollface,” to you.”

“I love it when you two get all retro on me.” Darcy smiles, “I’m heading back on the bike. See you in a couple of hours?”

“Both of us.”

Neither see the camera flash going off, but that’s because telephoto lens have gotten really good.

 

                                                                          *

“Oh no, please, you guys can continue to have your picture plastered everywhere.” Bucky says, landing on the couch, and stretching his legs over both Steve and Darcy, but not laying back until he’s thoroughly kissed Steve.

“Yep, never getting old.” Darcy watches with amusement, “But ugh, I am so tired of seeing my My Little Pony pajama pants being on page ten of Us Weekly.”

“Remember when women wouldn’t leave the house without a hat, gloves and lipstick?” Steve muses.

“Remember life before yoga pants?” Bucky counters. Steve nods in agreement.

“I’m just…maybe I’ll cut my hair so they stop recognizing me. Dye it bright pink and wear striped tights and a miniskirt and look nothing like myself.” She groans, “I did not sign up for being followed whenever I’m out with Steve. And then, of course, when any other combination of us is out, it’s like, I can’t even look at you right.”

Steve reaches out a possessive hand over her hair, before pulling her halfway over to lean against him.

Bucky huffs, “This is the picture for the Christmas card.” Bucky stretches his arms behind his back, making him arc his chest. It does about half the job he remembers, but his shoulders ache from holding still, and there’s always a bit of the ghost around the prosthetic that irrationally feels good to be included in the stretch,

“Darcy Lewis and her harem of very pretty boys.” He does enjoy the mouth on that woman and he’s almost perfectly happy that his return to clear thinking and his own mind, regaining so many things that he’d lost and forgotten also brought him back to Steve, who came with strings attached.

Darcy keeps a radio, no wait, a playlist, going most of the time, programmed with standard classics, modern pop music and whatever she feels that her boys need to be exposed to. They all could stand to not listen to New Wave again, but she’s honed it on the jazz standards since Tony sang just a snippet the other day. He lets his head tip back again as Steve produces a book and Darcy her tablet, reading and working in the quiet.

The quiet gets to be too much though, and he has to focus on the softly playing music to keep from thinking further and back, too far back, and it’s a struggle to hear the music over the blood he has on his mind.

There’s a tapping on the soles of his feet, a steady voice, rising at end of the words.

“Bucky? James?” the voice is saying, light and levity, and a hallelujah, “You with us?”

“Yeah,” he says, throat dry and raw, “Yeah, I’m here.”

                                                        *

It’s something else, though, the way Bucky will look at the photos that Steve and Darcy deride. He doesn’t quite stare with longing, but he lingers before dropping the magazine to the floor..

“So, here we are,” Steve says, “A new century to wake up to, and still can’t show who we are in public.”

Bucky straightens up. Darcy’s half-asleep but trying to be interested in the conversation, her fingers drumming again on Bucky’s feet.

“The amount of people that we could send that Christmas card to is very small.” Bucky replies, relaxing by fractions, “And we wouldn’t actually need to send it outside of one building.”

“We keep finding ourselves ahead of the curve, don’t we?” Steve points out, and Darcy mumbles something about breaking it, but she’s clearly trying to restrain herself, something that’s very difficult. “I’ve loved you forever,” he admits, “then I wake up and that would be okay, but you aren’t there. No one is and I do better than just making do.”

“And then I show up.” Bucky says evenly, letting his legs slip from their laps to the floor.

“And I’m amazed at the wonders of the future where I don’t have to give either of you up. But is this public face of the three of going to be okay for you? You are the one that doesn’t get either of us when we go out.”

Steve can see the calculations running behind his oldest friend’s eyes. Because many of them are the same as his own. This thing they’ve got going is strong, but is it up to public scrutiny? The scrutiny of being a symbol for America?

Darcy’s contribution is even more calculated and personal, “You aren’t someone we could just keep on the shelf and take down for playtime.”

This could be disaster, Steve thinks, and prepares to lose Bucky to his thoughts and the past again. But Bucky laughs and the darkness right at the edges clears, “I wouldn’t do well in the limelight. Let someone else pave that road.”

“It would, however,” Darcy continues with a little smirk, “be a treat to explain that there were indeed bisexuals back in the old days.”

“Oh yes, let’s gets Steve’s blush back on television. What was it the last time?” Bucky feigns thinking back, “Right when you were asked about what you missed most and you were caught off guard and said seamed stockings.”

“And then Tony bought me a case.” Darcy adds, sitting up and turning so she’s closer to James, and her hands grip lightly the inside of Steve’s thigh. “Which, we are not going to knock, those are awesome. But the look on that adorable face when he opened that box…”

“Did it look like…” Bucky copies her position to get close enough to kiss her, hot and dirty, right in Steve’s line of sight, ”like the one he’s got right now?” Darcy laughs and leans in for another round.

Steve buries his head in his hands, the edges of his smile peeking through his fingers, “Why is this the Christmas card that I imagine?”

 


End file.
